U.S. awards grant to develop intermodal container network in China
The U.S. Trade and Development Agency awarded a $679,550 grant to the China Railways Container Transport Center to conduct a study into the development of an intermodal container transport system in China.
According to the USTDA, the study will be carried out by a yet-to-be-named U.S. firm. The study will review China’s approach to the intermodal container business, recommend improvements, develop a plan for China’s railway to increase its intermodal traffic, and build on prior work in this area by the World Bank and others.
In specific, the study will focus on three areas:
* Import-export freight that enters and leaves China by container ship.
* Domestic freight that originates and terminates in China.
* Possibility of land-bridge freight that can be transported by rail between China and the rest of Asia.
“By devising a strategy to provide greater access to domestic goods and those imported via container ship, the impact of the proposed system on less developed regions in Western China could be enormous,” the agency said in a statement.
The USTDA also said the project has the potential to generate more than $50 million in U.S. exports of new signal systems, container handling equipment, global positioning system tracking devices, information management systems, and technical support and training services related to these technologies.